The Earth We Knew
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Synopsis
…especially if you’re the governing mind for an interstellar military starship.
It's official: Sergeant Henry Morgan has now spent more time as a starship than he spent dead. His mission is more than a century old, but in some ways, he feels like it's just begun.
A desperate distress call from Earth has brought him back to his old cosmic stomping grounds, for your standard save-humanity-from-extinction-by-alien-constructs operation.
But Henry needs to realize something: while his species might be the new kid on the galactic block, it is not without its secrets. Many of them deep and dark, with implications that reach back to the time when he himself walked the Earth on two legs.
In some ways, humanity has become more alien than the extraterrestrials. And if Henry can't figure out what this means - fast - he's going to have serious problems keeping himself and his crew safe.
Download I, Starship: The Earth We Knew and grab the edge of your seat for this bold new space opera.
Release date: December 11, 2024
Publisher: Mirth Publishing
Print pages: 318
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The Earth We Knew
Scott Bartlett
Chapter One
Seemey, 2199
The Interchange departed from Proxima Centauri on the very day her repairs were finished. This, in spite of the cats’ repeated offer of further upgrades, along with their lavish hospitality while they were being installed.
Seemey ordered the immediate departure because he knew it was his duty. The distress signal he’d received from someone named Admiral Bellagamba—a United Earth Navy officer who surely hadn’t been born yet when Seemey and his crew left the planet eighty-two years ago—had been as clear as it was dire. The Scree were still at large in the solar system humanity called home. They’d multiplied, and Earth was under heavy attack.
The distress message said thousands. How many will there be now, over four years after it was sent? And how many by the time we finally return, in almost forty years?
The possibility that he’d find Earth overrun and humanity extinct, aside from the crew aboard his ship, felt very real. It was enough to keep him up at night…although, the marbles which someone had managed to insert into the overhead above his cabin didn’t help either, with their perpetual rolling. He still hadn’t swallowed his pride enough to ask Dalca to try removing them, and anyway, until now he’d mostly been sleeping in his sumptuous quarters within the Seat of the Fundament.
It was with reluctance that he took such abrupt leave of the cats, who’d given no real species name to call them by, other than that they called themselves “the People,” and sometimes “the Chosen.” Neither name had caught on with the crew aboard the Interchange, and so they’d stuck with calling them cats, since they bore an uncanny resemblance to that Earthly animal.
To hear the cats tell it, their civilization had been following a downward slide for centuries, and they were now well past their peak. Several of them had informed Seemey that many throughout the Fundament, cats and other species alike, had stopped paying anything more than lip service to Fundament principles. As such, they were in a state of decay.
That might have been true, but Seemey knew he would miss his time in the Seat of the Fundament, which humans knew as Proxima Centauri. The cats had inspired him to acts, in and out of battle, that he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of, even in spite of his successful career as a surface naval captain on Earth.
And something about the aliens, and the way they did things, had brought about a certain stirring inside him. Not quite nostalgia, since he’d never encountered anything like the cats or their society in his life.
But they did incite a remembrance of some kind. Maybe of growing up with the ghosts of structures and forms of things that had once existed for humanity, but which had long since passed from the Earth.
Either way, he reflected on the day the Interchange unfurled the solar sail given them by the Archivists and maneuvered into the reoriented Beamlace relay’s path, to be boosted by its light into the stars. I’m glad the Rafail is coming with us.
During the first few days of the two ships’ acceleration toward Earth, Seemey had little contact with anyone aboard the cats’ ship, which they referred to as an escort carrier. Both crews were busy, it seemed, with everything necessary to make the ships ready for a decades-long voyage—at least, everything which they’d been able to put off until now.
But it felt natural that he would connect with Admiral Perik during these early days of the voyage, in order to set the tone for how things would go between them, and to cement their cordial relations.
But they weren’t always so cordial, were they?
On the day he’d met the admiral, Perik had insisted that he allow the Interchange to be boarded, under threat of reducing Seemey and his crew “to their constituent atoms.” Considering that start, it was really quite astonishing how well their relationship had come along in a matter of weeks.
Seemey took the call with Perik from his command chair, where he sat alone in the CIC. He might have taken it in his office, but the cats were already so far advanced that he felt he needed to do everything he could to underscore humanity’s capabilities, limited though they were.
The cat, on the other hand, appeared on the viewscreen sitting in what looked like a chamber about as big as an old-timey phone booth. “Captain Seemey. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again.”
“That makes the two of us,” Seemey said with a friendly smile. “I trust preparations are going well, in advance of your crew entering Offset. Or rather—Counterpoise, you call it, don’t you?”
“Indeed. And, preparations are going well, although we’ll leave many tasks to keep our monitoring team busy.”
“Monitoring team?”
“Yes—we have several monitoring teams, actually. They’re the ones who will remain awake in shifts, in order to ensure the ship’s smooth functioning throughout the voyage. They’ll age significantly faster than the rest of us, but such are the necessities of interstellar travel. We must give thanks for the Beamlace, else such teams would have much more to sacrifice.”
Seemey’s mustache twitched involuntarily, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, clearing his throat. “That’s, ah—well—I’m sorry to hear about that.”
“Are you? It’s simply a reality of interstellar travel. Though, it has been noted by some that your crew do not seem subject to that reality. You all seem fairly young and able, in spite of your lengthy voyage from your home planet, made longer by the lack of Beamlace access during your initial trip.”
If Seemey didn’t know better, he would have said the cat was amused as he watched him shift about in his seat.
Either way, he couldn’t bear it any longer. The cats had already done much for him, and while he himself had nearly died for them, it didn’t seem right to allow Perik’s crew to squander years of their lives when he knew it was avoidable.
“We…have an RM,” he said at last. “It stands for ‘Reconstituted Mind,’ and it’s essentially a human whose mind was uploaded into the ship’s computer. It watches over our ship for us while we’re in Offset, and in the event of a crisis, it resuscitates whatever crew are needed to deal with it.”
Perik’s smile widened. “This doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, Captain.”
Seemey frowned. “It doesn’t?”
“No. In fact, the Vicar already suspected this, and he shared those suspicions with me. Our leader has been given many gifts—he is strong of will, and his intellect is often enlightened in this way. He deduced the existence of your ‘RM’ as you call it quite soon after learning of your entry into our system. The Vicar believes you were wise to conceal its existence, and will be wise to continue doing so as you visit other foreign systems. I agree with him. But he would never have sought to obtain the tech for the Fundament, unless it was ordained in the flow of events. And so, you never had anything to fear from us.”
For several long seconds of stunned silence, Seemey sat there. At last, he managed to speak. “Well, then. That’s…good, I guess.”
“I believe so. And I do appreciate your gracious offer, for your RM to monitor both our ships, while both crews preserve their vitality. It makes me all the more certain that I have partnered with a decent man. And I accept your offer.”
Seemey nodded curtly. “Very good, then. I’m sure our subordinates can make the appropriate arrangements in the coming days.”
“Indeed. On that note, I’d like to sweep away a possible point of contention between us, so that it doesn’t become one.”
“And that is?”
Perik shrugged. “I want to acknowledge that, while the equivalent of my rank in your military would be higher than yours, I do not expect you to be subordinate to me. The Rafail is accompanying you to your home system, and our mission—to establish contact between the Fundament and humanity—is corollary to yours. Therefore, I propose we operate as partners in this undertaking, and as for myself, I intend to defer to you in all that is reasonable.”
“I see. Well….” Seemey paused to collect his thoughts. Perik had called him a ‘decent man,’ but how could he ever compete with the admiral’s sophistication, his magnanimity? The alien radiated warmth, even when discussing the nuances of interspecies command structures. And if Seemey was being honest, the ease with which Perik handled things, even in uncertain situations, made him feel a little intimidated.
“Well, I do appreciate it,” he said. “I suppose that’s all for now, but I look forward to our next conversation, Admiral.”
“As do I. We will have much to discuss, I suspect—in the coming days and the coming decades. Our task is not a small one, Captain Seemey, and even as we undertake it, great powers maneuver through the stars all around us.”
“For sure,” Seemey said. “It’s, um…a big deal.” He reddened as he realized how banal his words sounded. “Anyway. Till next time.”
Hastily, he terminated the connection, then stared down at his console for the next several minutes, berating himself.
I have to do better. I have to represent my species better. And I have to be in full command, both in name and in fact.
Even more than Admiral Perik is.
Chapter Two
Shah, 2199
“I can’t believe we’re going back already,” Diaz said in between nibbling carrot sticks that had been grown on the hydroponics level.
“I know, right?” Garnier said sarcastically, from across the mess table. “It’s only been nearly a century.”
“It doesn’t feel like that, though.” Diaz shook her head. “Crazy to think about. Things will probably be so different when we get back. Do you think Chili's will still be open?”
Kelly snorted. “Chili’s. That’s your big question for heading back to Earth.”
“You’re right,” Diaz said. “Maybe they won’t be. I guess there’s a lot of aliens attacking. Could disrupt service.” Her brow furrowed, and she looked genuinely distraught. “I could really use some chicken fajitas.”
Shah rolled his eyes.
“I’m glad we’re having this conversation,” Major Jim Anderson said from where he was sitting, in front of the bulkhead farthest from the exit. “This is good—we’ve had a lot happen to us, and not much time to process it. From our perspective, we’ve really only been on this mission for a few months. But decades have passed. Does everyone still remember why you chose to go on this mission in the first place?”
Three seats away from Anderson, Amaryllis leaned to the side, lips pursed in thought. “Once I heard Captain Seemey was going to be in command, that clinched it for me. I always found him so…inspiring….”
Shah narrowed his eyes at the corporal. It was unusual for her not to be sitting right next to Anderson, usually pressed up against him, as if the major wouldn’t notice what she was doing. Shah had known her to show up to meetings early, to make sure she always claimed the spot next to the Marine commander. And yet, here she was sitting well away from him, and talking about the captain with a faraway look in her eyes.
Interesting.
“I know why Packard came,” Diaz said as she licked ranch sauce from her fingers.
Sergeant Packard glared at her. “Diaz—”
“To get away from his rich old crone of a wife.” The lance corporal grinned. “I guess you’ll come back to a pretty padded bank account, huh?” She shrugged. “Unless the aliens destroyed your bank.”
“Shut your mouth,” Packard snapped.
“Easy,” Anderson said, looking between the two Marines and appearing anything but at ease.
“Why did you join the mission, Major?” Shah asked, plastering on a smile that felt sickly on his lips, but which he forced himself to maintain nonetheless.
“Oh,” Anderson said, his eyes flitting to the tabletop. “Well…I wanted to go somewhere where all my privilege wouldn’t count for as much. But I should have known I couldn’t escape it.”
“Sir, with all due respect, what are you talking about?” Diaz asked. “If you’re good, you’re good. End of story.”
“Thanks, Diaz. But I think you know as well as I do that I’ve benefited from a lot of unearned advantages that have helped me get by better than a lot of—”
Shah abruptly pushed his chair back, drawing the eyes of the rest of the team. “If you’ll excuse me, Major,” he said, as meekly as he could manage. “But I’m exhausted, and it was a long watch. I think I’d better take full advantage of my racktime, today.” Just now, he couldn’t bear listening to another one of Anderson’s whipped-dog spiels. They drove him a special kind of crazy.
He sent meaningful looks at Packard and Garnier, who also rose to their feet.
“I’m pretty tired too, Major,” Garnier said. “But I’m glad we had this talk.”
“Yeah,” Packard said, who wasn’t on their team, and so couldn’t marshal the same excuse. “And I’d better, uh, go do stuff. Alpha Team’s on watch now, after all.”
Anderson was nodding soberly. “Fair enough, Marines. Go get your rest, Shah and Garnier. You’ve earned it.”
Unlike you, apparently, Shah thought, though he kept his grin fixed in place. To hear you tell it, you’ve never earned a thing in your life.
“Packard,” Anderson went on, “thank you for your vigilance.”
“You got it, Major.”
The three Marines left the mess, with Shah and Garnier heading for the berthing space…and Packard following right behind.
“Thought you were eager to get patrolling,” Garnier said, smirking.
“The berth needs patrolling too, don’t it?”
Once they were all standing near the racks, Shah told Garnier to shut the hatch. “So the infernal RM doesn’t butt in.”
Packard was looking at him wearing an appraising expression. “Got something on your mind, Captain?”
“Just that we have a massive opportunity on our hands, and we’re squandering it.”
“You talking about getting the Codex stuff into some power broker’s hands, back on Earth? I think we already learned Pyle keeps a close watch on the thing. And anyway, what’s a power broker, or even a weapons dealer, worth on a planet that’s under massive alien attack? We don’t even know Earth’s going to be waiting for us when we get back.”
“You truly believe all of Earth’s militaries combined aren’t going to withstand the Scree for a good, long time? Do you have so little faith in humanity, Sergeant?”
“He has a point,” Garnier said. “We could be leaving a lot on the table. Are we really content with Seemey and Anderson sopping up all the glory from everything that we’ve accomplished?”
“All right,” Packard said. “Let’s say there is still a thriving underground economy intact back on the ol‘ home rock. What are we gonna sell to them?”
“Fundament missile tech,” Shah said.
The sergeant raised his eyebrows. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“The specs and schematics aren’t locked away in the Codex—they’re in the ship’s ordinary data storage. And if I can get access to the captain’s office, or his console in the CIC, I’m sure I can install something that will scrape it for us the next time he pulls it up. That, or scrape the access code we need to get at it.”
“You have a plan for doing that?” Garnier asked.
“Well, for one thing, Amaryllis seems much more interested in the captain these days than the major. Maybe we can use that. Tip her off when Seemey’s alone and unoccupied, perhaps.”
“You really think she’d go along with that?”
Packard barked laughter. “Please. She’s desperate.”
“Exactly,” Shah said. “Besides, she’ll have no idea she’s playing a part in our plan. But the captain isn’t the only one we’ll need to distract. There’s the XO, who might also walk into the CIC announced. Not to mention the RM…”
Chapter Three
Sanders-White, 2199
Gilbert Sanders-White strolled into the mess to find most of the Marine team taking up seats at all three of the tables there, even though all five of them could have been accommodated by just one table.
“Why are you guys Marine-spreading?” he asked as he crossed the mess to fix himself a coffee. “Shouldn’t you leave room for other people who might want to use the mess?”
Lance Corporal Desmond Kelly cracked his knuckles while eyeing him like a wolf, before patting the chair next to him. “You can come sit next to me if you like.” A toothy grin spread across his face.
No thanks. “Maybe another time, Corporal,” Sanders-White said as he spooned some of the brown, dry granules into a mug. “So what is this, the annual Marine team AGM of whatever-year-it-is?” He’d found that he’d grown a little bolder in how he talked to the Marines as he realized just how important he’d become to the Interchange’s success.
“Oh, we’re just taking some time during the watch changeover to catch up with each other,” Major Jim Anderson said, as brightly as ever. “Normally, security considerations wouldn’t allow it, but I figure we’re safe enough while underway.”
“Unless the engineer decides to take another swing at Pyle, I guess,” Sanders-White said through a grin. He filled up the kettle, which the Marines had predictably left empty, and switched it on.
Anderson’s own smile fell away. “I believe Commander Dalca deeply regrets that.”
“I’m sure he does. From what I hear, he got a pretty sharp crack across the back of his hands from the captain for it. So to speak.”
“How’d you get on this ship, anyhow?” Caruso asked him. “The security around the Interchange was airtight. Same goes for the shuttles that went back and forth between her and Earth’s surface. There’s no way you snuck aboard without help from someone on the inside.”
“No way that you can think of, anyway,” Sanders-White said.
“To be fair,” Diaz put in, “Caruso doesn’t do much thinking. I think he finds it exhausting.”
Caruso shoved her. “You do enough thinking for both of us, Diaz. It’s just always about food.”
The kettle finished boiling, and Sanders-White poured the steaming liquid into his mug, swished it around over the sink, then raised it in salute to the Marines. “You all keep up the good work, now.” With that, he took his leave.
As he strode through the corridors, he could almost feel the RM’s eyes on him. That didn’t mean the thing was actively monitoring him right now, of course, but he happened to know that Seemey had ordered it to include checking up on him as part of its usual rounds. Which meant every hour, he needed to be somewhere the RM could see, else it would notify one of the Marines to go looking for him.
He’d been given a cleared-out supply closet for a sleeping chamber, with a cot to sleep on. The RM had access to that too, of course. Privacy was a thing of the past for Sanders-White.
The distant past. Everything’s the distant past, now.
His coffee was still too hot to drink by the time he reached his destination—the AI lab. He let himself in and found Pyle pacing through the black obelisks in the back chamber, his skin lit by their ghostly blue glow.
It took the AI engineer a few seconds to register his presence. When he did, he spoke in a low voice, with urgency. “Did you close the hatch behind you?”
“Yeah. Relax.”
“Go check to make sure it’s still closed.”
“I thought you made it so the RM can’t use its bot to open it anymore.”
“Go. Check.”
Sanders-White threw up his hands. “Fine.” He went back to check, and found that it was still shut, to no one’s surprise.
“It’s closed,” he said as he reentered the back room. Pyle had resumed his pacing, and wasn’t where he had been before, so Sanders-White followed the sound of his footsteps.
By the time he found him, Pyle had stopped, and was looking strangely at one of the black boxes, with its ethereal glow.
“We haven’t mined any Voidflow yet,” Sanders-White said, mostly to make conversation and hopefully nudge Pyle out of his weird mood. “Who knows, though. Maybe we’ll solve a block by the time we get back to Earth.”
“I don’t care.”
“Really? Seems kinda important.”
“It’s irrelevant, until we reach a system that’s actually integrated into the galactic economy. That won’t be anytime soon. We’re headed back to Earth.”
“I know. If you can believe it, someone actually told me what was going on for once.”
Pyle’s eyes locked onto his. “That sounded almost like an accusation.”
Sanders-White shrugged. “Hey, if the clown shoe fits…”
“You might consider speaking to me with a little more respect. I’m the only reason you’re not long dead and gone, after a life spent rotting in a jail cell.”
“And I’m grateful for that. But come on, Ethan. You weren’t acting alone. Someone with a lotta clout wanted me free and roaming the galaxy, otherwise you never would have taken the risk.”
Pyle’s eyes were narrowed. “You know, you don’t sound very grateful.”
“Listen, I’m sorry, all right. Hey, you seem stressed. What’s eating you?”
“We’re going to need to play a very delicate game, once we return to Earth. You do realize that, yes?”
“Sure.”
“Are you? Somehow, I doubt you appreciate the precariousness of our situation. Direct communication with the Rook’s Nest will be all but impossible. Further encrypted transmissions to and from the Interchange will only raise Seemey’s suspicions.”
“But we have to communicate with them,” Sanders-White said, as he began to catch some of Pyle’s unease. “We need to know what the next phase looks like. Don’t we?”
Pyle raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps you are beginning to understand. Gilbert, we must not reveal our affiliation—with each other, or with the Stewards. And we can’t be seen to steer events. It’s possible we’ll have to go for weeks without direction from them of any kind. We’re going to have to play a very subtle game, and we’ll likely be flying blind for much of it. If not all of it.”
Sanders-White whistled. “Well, I’m sure the Stewards have everything under control. They always do. Didn’t they have history all mapped out for the next five hundred years, or something?”
“You do know about the distress transmission Seemey got from Earth, yes?”
“I do…”
“Well, that certainly didn’t sound like the Stewards have the present situation figured out. But hopefully the transmission is just the next move in the game. Calculated and measured.”
“Yeah,” Sanders-White said, raising his coffee mug toward Pyle. “Here’s hoping.”
Chapter Four
Henry, 2199
Henry tracked Gilbert Sanders-White to the AI lab, but he had no time to think about what this second visit to Pyle—that he knew about—might signify.
If he waited any longer, he’d be late to Doctor Macdonald’s office, where she’d asked him to ‘sit in’ (not that he could actually sit) on Ademir Souza’s first counseling session with her.
“RM,” she said mere seconds after he finished flicking through his available sensor feeds to arrive at the overhead camera showing her office. “Are you there?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Given the rush he’d been in to get here, he felt like he should be out of breath. But of course, respiration wasn’t part of his new life, was it?
“Splendid.”
Except, Souza was frowning. “The RM’s here?” he asked warily. “Why?”
“To summarize our conversation for me after the fact, and to highlight themes I might miss. The same as any AI might. Will that be a problem?”
“Well, uh….” Souza’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Wasn’t he…alive, at some point? He was a Marine, right?”
“The mind on which the RM was initially based came from a man named Sergeant Henry Morgan,” Macdonald said calmly. Henry sensed Souza’s questions irritated her, which she nonetheless was doing a pretty good job of concealing. “Sergeant Morgan was alive, but I can assure you, the RM is very much not alive. It is a tool like any other, and today it will act as my automated stenographer. Provided you give your consent—otherwise I will have to divide my focus between our conversation and taking detailed notes.”
Okay, that last sentence did sound kind of pointed.
“I guess that’s fine,” Souza said.
“Great. And, just look on the bright side. At least you don’t have to resort to using a chatbot as an actual counselor, as many people have had to back on Earth. Because you’re military, you get access to a real, live, educated, professional, human counselor. Isn’t that nice?”
“Sure,” Souza said. Then he added, a little too quickly: “It’s nice.”
“I think so too.”
Of course you do, Henry reflected. You’re the one who said it. But he knew better than to say that, or to make any observation at all, really. Given Macdonald’s attitude about his existential status, and given his past experiences with those of a similar attitude, it really would just be a lot more productive to do as he was told and nothing else.
What he did do was drop into a simulation of his old command center, mentally requesting that it generate a notepad and pen for him on the desk in front of the triple-monitor setup. A contemporary chatbot would no doubt have been able to whip up a summary and analysis merely from ingesting the conversation whole, but this was the only way he’d have a hope of coming close to producing something that would satisfy Macdonald.
“So, I understand you’re from Rio de Janeiro,” she said. “I’ve never been there, myself. Did you like Rio?”
“Oh, yes,” Souza said, looking wistful. “My brother and I—” Then he stopped talking abruptly, and his mouth twitched, while his eyes widened slightly.
Henry scribbled furiously, wishing Souza would talk more slowly.
“Your brother. Paulo, correct?”
“Yes,” Souza said, his Adam’s apple bobbing again. “Paulo.”
“You spent a lot of time with him, in Rio? Growing up, was it?”
“And after we were all grown, as well.”
“Did you like Paulo?”
“Paulo…” Souza frowned. “He was really just such an idiot.”
“Oh. Really? Why do you say that?”
“He made stupid decisions. A total hothead. Got himself into trouble too much. Too much.”
“Mm.” Macdonald leaned back in her chair a little. “You didn’t get along with him, then.”
“No, that’s not right. I didn’t say that.”
“And yet, you think he was an ‘idiot,’ as you said. Did he know you thought that way about him?”
“I…well…no. Paulo thought I loved him dearly.”
“And did you?”
“Um…yes. Yes, I did. Even though he was just this complete moron.”
“Did you ever feel jealous of your brother?”
Souza shook his head sharply. “No. I admired him. I tried to live up to his example.”
“The example of an idiotic hothead?”
“Huh? I didn’t mean—my brother? Well, he had his good qualities too, I guess.”
By now, Macdonald was frowning deeply. “Have you ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Lieutenant?”
“No. Why?”
“Because you’re exhibiting some fairly schizophrenic symptoms, at present. One second you’re disparaging your brother, the other you’re saying you tried to live up to his example.”
“Sorry. I guess…it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen him.”
“Not really. Not from your perspective, anyway. It’s been less than a year.”
A silence stretched between them, which brought Henry some measure of relief, since his note-taking had fallen well behind the conversation. Then Macdonald spoke again, far too soon for Henry’s liking.
“What did your brother do?”
“My brother…Paulo, you’re asking about.” Souza was speaking slowly and carefully, now, which Henry truly appreciated.
“Did you have another brother?”
“No.”
“Then yes, of course I’m asking about Paulo.”
“Paulo ran with the wrong crowd. He worked a number of menial jobs, but he got into selling drugs for money on the side. Then, that became his whole thing.”
“Did Paulo have a lot of friends?”
“Yes. Too many.”
“And did you?”
“Me?” Souza paused. “…no. I didn’t.”
“Did that ever make you jealous?”
“Ademir would never be jealous of Paulo.”
Macdonald’s brow furrowed slightly. “Do you realize you just referred to yourself in the third person?”
“Did I? Oh. Sorry.”
“What I’m trying to get at is…well, you did say you tried to live up to your brother’s example. If you made a long-time habit of that, it may well have led to your developing a self-limiting belief, that you could never be good enough to shine while you were in his shadow. And it’s possible the anxiety you developed while living with that neurosis became crippling, and eventually transferred to your duties here aboard the Interchange. Does that sound plausible to you?”
“Yes.”
“You answered that question rather quickly.”
“Well, it seems right.”
“Can you repeat back to me what I said?”
“You said that maybe, living with my brother, I became scared of my…shadow. Or something.”
Macdonald’s expression become one of bewilderment mixed with consternation. A longer silence than before passed between them.
“I think that will do it for this session, Lieutenant,” she said at last. “I’ll be in touch to schedule the next one. For now, you’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” With that, Souza leapt to his feet and bolted for the hatch, yanked it open, and fled.
The doctor sat in silence a while longer, looking thoughtful.
“Any insights to offer, RM?”
Henry hesitated, looking back over his notes, which seemed messy and disjointed. He tried to imagine how a large language model might answer Macdonald’s question, since that seemed to be the type of response she was looking for.
Then again, an LLM already would have answered her by now. And while it would have had a vast database of information from which it would automatically compile a detailed answer, he could only draw on his own personal knowledge and experience, which seemed pretty limited when it came to offering a highly trained counselor insights into her own job.
Nevertheless, he tried his best.
“The lieutenant seems to have a highly complicated relationship with his brother,” he began. “I believe he has a lot of unexamined insecurities connected with Paulo. It’s also possible that, during past interactions with his brother, the lieutenant sustained, uh, some emotional trauma. Which he hasn’t properly processed yet.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Macdonald said. “Thank you, RM. Good job.”
“Thank you, ma’am!” Henry said, astonished and relieved that he’d actually been able to provide value of some kind.
“Go away, now.” She made a flicking gesture with her fingers.
He did go away, and drifted idly through the corridors, knowing it was still a good thirty minutes until his next round of checks.
He came across Captain Shah, Corporal Garnier, and Sergeant Packard walking through a passageway with purpose, each of them strangely silent as they checked down every cross-corridor they came to, as well as through any hatches that had been left open along their path.
Henry had been seeing those three together a lot, lately. He made a mental note of it, in case it became relevant at some point. Briefly, he considered mentioning it to the captain, but immediately scrapped the idea. He didn’t want to risk getting the Marines in trouble for what was probably nothing.
Besides, his relationship with Captain Seemey was still fairly complicated. Sure, Seemey had had some surprising things to say, the day he’d come home red-cheeked from the banquet with the cats, but Henry couldn’t quite bring himself to trust him.
Especially not after what had happened with Ensign Natasha Honeywell—the warm and beautiful Supply officer who he’d been tricked into thinking actually existed.
Chapter Five
Seemey, 2199
Seemey finished shaving then looked himself in the eyes, noting the bulbous dark bags that protruded from underneath them.
You need to go to Dalca, he told himself. And he felt like he just might be desperate enough to do it—to have the engineer allocate some of his scant time to investigating the marble situation in the overhead of Seemey’s cabin, and to see what might be done about it.
He gave a long sigh and remained where he stood, even after making up his mind. A sense of deepening bewilderment had taken hold ever since he’d read the letters from his Cathy. Not just bewilderment about her—the fact she was gone forever, and that his granddaughter must also be gone, who according to the letters had become a world-renowned spiritual leader. But also bewilderment about the facts of his existence, now.
What had his life become? He’d agreed to captain the Interchange in the same way he’d ever made any decision: decisively, and with full confidence in his instincts, that he was choosing a path that would be full of personal advancement and victory.
But going on a century since he’d made that choice—or a mere matter of months, from his perspective—he was only now beginning to process it.
Everything is gone. Everything, everything. I don’t even know what I’m fighting for, anymore.
Earth, obviously, but he no longer knew Earth, did he? He didn’t know what people were like, now. In this, the year 2199, the turn of a new century, he only truly knew this ship and her crew.
And I don’t even know them very well.
Sure, he knew their backgrounds, their track records, and even their personalities, at least as well as he knew any personality he’d worked with for less than a year. But he didn’t truly know them. Not like he’d known Cathy.
I don’t know anyone, anymore. Do I?
But his duty remained clear, and indeed, he needed it. He needed to clearly define it, and to cling to it. His duty was to humanity, no matter what form they existed in, and no matter how many humans there were left.
Without that, he would truly have lost everything.
His com buzzed from his bedside table, and he went in to pick it up.
“Captain, it’s Campbell. We just received a transmission from Earth. We’re able to decrypt it this time—it was encrypted using one of the schemes we were given before we left—but I figured you’d want to be the first to review it.”
Uncanny timing. “Thank you, XO. I’ll do so in the CIC.”
A brief silence came over the line, then she answered. “Yes, sir.”
What was the hesitation about? he wondered as he let himself out of his cabin, secured the hatch behind him, and headed for his console in the CIC. Maybe Campbell had begun to question why he was using the CIC, lately, for things he could easily do in his office.
He had to admit, it was a good question. It used a lot more of the reactor’s output to power the large viewscreen than it did for his office workstation to function.
But for some reason, he found he was better able to concentrate while sitting in the command seat of the Interchange. It brought him greater peace—albeit not total peace, or anything close to it.
Either way, he would review the transmission from there.
When he settled into his chair and checked his inbox, he found the decrypted message already waiting for him, and so he threw it up on the main display, leaning back and resting his chin on his right fist as he read.
This transmission is being sent to all RM-assisted UEN interstellar military vessels, transmitted on October 7th, 2195 by Admiral Bellagamba, callsign Mallard Bill.
Seemey stopped reading. All RM-assisted military vessels? he mused. That phrase was already interesting enough to give him plenty to think about.
But for now, he continued.
I trust that by now, all six of you are underway and returning to Earth to aid in our planet’s defense. In the meantime, it seems prudent to send an update on how events have unfolded in this solar system since your departure, to better equip you to confront the situation you’re likely to face once you arrive.
As I mentioned, six RM-assisted starships have been constructed, and they were all sent to various nearby stars likely to have civilizations, based on what we’ve learned about the nature and prevalence of alien life in the galaxy. Their six immediate destinations are as follows: Alpha Canis Majoris, Gliese 65, Lalande 21185, Luhman 16, Toliman, and Ross 154. The process of constructing and deploying those six ships was completed in the year 2129, and their mission was to find advanced species with whom humanity might make common cause against the force threatening civilizations throughout the galaxy.
In 2131, the UEN’s efforts turned to constructing starships exclusively for system defense, a purpose which didn’t require the use of RMs. Extraplanetary colonization also began in earnest at this time—first to establish year-round military outposts up-system, mostly as an early-warning system, and later followed by massive civilian colonization. All of this was done in ignorance of the growing alien presence in the solar system.
This mass emigration from Earth will either prove one of humanity’s greatest triumphs or most devastating tragedies, partly because those colonies now seem likely to become the front line in the defense against the alien constructs. May they fight with vigor.
For better or worse, the allure of colonizing extraplanetary bodies resulted in a large portion of Earth’s young leaving the planet. Even with our long-running Offset-mother program, we have now experienced a catastrophic collapse of our population. This, in spite of concerted measures taken to maintain the population and to preserve stability. It has been an uphill battle, but thankfully not a complete failure.
Due to some bold steps taken, the population has stabilized at one point four billion, and the chaos that took hold for a time has now been arrested.
We have defeated the first wave of alien attackers, and our forty-three military starships are now returning to Earth’s orbit from their patrols all across the system. It will be another month before they’ve all arrived, but nevertheless we are confident they will get here before the next attack. Once they do, the security situation surrounding Earth will be much improved.
Having said that, we urge you to return with all possible haste. We know the constructs have been multiplying at an alarming rate, but we lack full knowledge of the situation. Consequently, we do not yet have reliable projections of how long we might expect to hold out against this threat.
Mallard out.
As he finished, Seemey exhaled sharply, causing his mustache to flutter. He looked the message over once more, slower this time.
He’d read enough military briefs to know when he wasn’t being told something—and he sensed the message from this Bellagamba omitted a lot of such somethings.
For instance, what “bold steps” had been taken to stabilize the population, even at such a low level? And who had taken them? Normally, military officials were quick to credit either themselves or the organization they belonged to—in this case, the UE—for such successes. Why was no one credited this time? It suggested that these “steps” were perhaps more complicated than the transmission let on.
Even more glaring, the return of the system defense starships to Earth represented an abandonment of the extraplanetary colonies, which was another uncomfortable fact Bellagamba had neatly sidestepped. He wished them ‘vigor’ in their fight. Were well wishes the only assistance Earth intended to send her daughters?
And aside from that…what else might the transmission be concealing?
I need to share this with Admiral Perik.
And so he contacted the Rafail with a request to speak to Perik, and he was surprised by how quickly his request was fulfilled. He waited no more than ten minutes before the admiral appeared on the viewscreen, replacing Bellagamba’s message. He sat in the same tiny cubicle as before.
“Admiral,” Seemey said. “I’m afraid my purpose for contacting you today is a little less pleasant than our last conversation.” He sent Perik Bellagamba’s message for review, and sat in silence while the cat read it.
“It seems your planet is in trouble,” he said once he finished.
It was an incredible understatement, but not totally unsurprising from the circumspect admiral. “Yes,” Seemey agreed. “I thought it important to share this with you, so that we can both be as prepared as possible when we arrive at Earth. But I also have a more specific motive for sending you Bellagamba’s words.”
“Which is?”
“Before we left Proxima—er, the Seat of the Fundament—the Vicar mentioned the possibility of further upgrades to the Interchange. I declined, because I understood how urgent the need was to return to Earth as quickly as we could manage. But now, I’d like to know whether there’s anything you’d be willing to transmit via laser that might better equip us for the fight ahead.”
“Yes, actually,” Perik said, with more readiness and openness than Seemey had expected, even from him. “It’s something I’ve already been contemplating sending you, and this clinches my decision. It’s the schematics for a fabber, similar to those the Scree use to reproduce, but more primitive. It can’t produce fully autonomous constructs, for example—that tech is well beyond us. But I expect you’ll be able to put it to good use nevertheless.”
“Thank you,” Seemey said. “Truly.” He racked his brain for something he might offer to the cat in kind, and found himself saying something he never would have expected to say. “Er…if you like, I could…hm. Well, yes. I could share the RM tech with you. I don’t know how it works, personally, but I’m sure Pyle could explain it.”
Perik smiled warmly. “It’s a gracious offer, Captain. But I could never accept it. Not without approval from the Seat, which have to be the product of much discernment. You see, the Fundament does not believe that something should be done merely because it’s possible.”
“Well, don’t let humanity rub off on you, then,” Seemey said with a smile of his own, his much wryer than Perik’s. “Because that’s the only reason we’ve ever needed.” ...
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